Isabella

The secrets of the Witches of Athay include a method for storing all the blood in your body in a jar in the cooling cellar. Isabella does so, with a knife and a pipette, then gives Patrick the umbrella and leads him out into the storm of glass. The music of the shards is beautiful; the cuts don’t hurt. She seals them up with superglue.

In the cooling cellar again, she pours her blood back in through her ear.

“I think you should have waited,” says Patrick.

“What?” says Isabella, as, in a pattern of tiny fountains, she begins to leak.